July 1, 2010
- Edward MCCALLISTER(6939) (578) was born on 4 Mar 1758 in Augusta Co, Va. (6940)He served in the military in Jan 1781 in Cowpens, SC. (578) Per Janice "In the Revolutionary War, Edward served in Captain Ballar's Company, the 26th District of Botetourt County. (A Seed-Bed of the Republic: A Study of the Pioneers in the Upper (Southern) Valley of Virginia, Robert Douthat Stoner, Roanoke, Va., 1962, p. 127.) Edward fought at Cowpens, South Carolina, with General Morgan. (Illinois State Historical Society Transactions for 1907, Dr. Daniel Berry. pp. 77-78.)There is a DAR/SAR file for Edward." He owned Land on 23 Oct 1816 in White Co, Il. (232) He appeared on the census in 1818 in White Co, Il. (232) He appeared on the census in 1820 in White Co, Il.(6941) He died on 30 May 1833 in White Co, Il. (6942)(232) (578) Inscription on Edward's stone at the Old Graveyard, Carmi, White County, Illinois: Virginia Pvt, Virginia Troops, Revolutionary War. Mar 4, 1758 - May 30, 1833. A photograph of the marker is at<http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=mccallister&GSbyrel=in&GSdy=1833&GSdyrel=in&GSst=16&GSentry=4&GSob=n&GRid=10927433&>He had an estate probated on 3 Jun 1833 in White county, Illinois. (232)(6943) Probate filed 3 June1833, and closed 38 March 1835. . His eldest son James McAllister was administrator. No wife was listed in the estate.Edward's children were sons James, Simon, Thomas, John, Richard, and Edward McAllister, daughters Elizabeth Burris, Sally McMullin, and Polly Baker. No grandchildren were listed in the estate. The estate documents can be located at: Southern Illinois University Repository: White County, Index to Illinois Probate Journal, Volume B, 1822-1844, page 102 : McAllister Edward. Administrator James McAllister.
MCALLISTER EDWARD 102 JAMES MCALLISTER-A 3 JUN 1833-28 MAR
1835 DISTRIBUTE TO: JAMES, SIMON, THOMAS, JOHN, RICHARD, & EDWARD
MCALLISTER, E. BURRIS, SALLY MULLIN, & DOLLY BAKER EQUAL SHARES.
Mr. Wesley McCallister's story. He says: "My grandfather, Edward McCallister, came fromIreland when a small boy; grew up in Virginia and served as a soldier through the Revolutionary War; was in the battle of Cowpens with General Morgan. After the war he married Miss DeHart, a French Huguenot, and settled in Kentucky. In 1810 he came to Illinois territory. At this time he had eight children, my father being one of the youngest. He came down the Green and Ohio rivers and up the Wabash river in a pirouque, landing at Cadd's ferry, where Marshall's ferry is now. He built a cabin and was living there at the time of the earthquake.My father was a child about 4 years old, and remembers his mother gathering up the children and taking them to the pirouque; saying that if the earth sank, they would be safe as the land and came ashore. All the stock was very much disturbed and frightened; horses nickering, cattle lowing, hogs squealing, and all the stock on the range running to the house.
Per Janice McAlpine, Edward served as Constable for Botetourt County as late as May 14, 1786, when his successor, James Robinson was appointed. In 1787, Edward paid taxes on 4 hourses and 5 cows in Botetourt County. Family history says that Edward moved to Kentucky about 1800 or even earlier.
When the estate of James McAllister was being settled in 1803, Edward signed transfer deeds in Bath Co., Virginia. There is no indication that Edward did this through a power-of-attorney. (Bath Co., VA - Deed Book 2. pg. 543.) This may mean that Edward was still in or near Bath Co. in 1803. On the other hand, most of his children, who were alive for the 1850 census, listed Kentucky as their places of birth.
More from Janice McAlpine: The first record I have for Edward in Kentucky is from 21 Sept.1804, when he bought 1,000 acres of land in Nelson/Hardin County, Kentucky, lying on Bacon Creek. It is possible that Edward used his share of James McAllister's estate to buy the land:
Hardin Co., Kentucky, Deed Book C, pg. 187-189 Land Deed from Larue to McCallister, Edward;8 April. 1806 (actual sale - 21 Sept. 1804). One thousand acres of land situated lying and being in the county of Hardin and on Bacon Creek, it being part of a survey or tract of land claimed by John Miller.
On 1 Jun 1810, Edward sold his Hardin Co. land to William Wilson:
Hardin Co., Kentucky, Deed Book D, pg 448-449: Land Deed from Edward McCallister to William Wilson. 1 Jun 1810. [Same land as above.]
Family history says that Edward took his family down the Green and Ohio Rivers and then up the Wabash River from Hardin Co., Kentucky, to Gallatin Co. in the Illinois Territory in 1810.
An article in the local newspaper described the earthquake this way:
"Then came that terrifying December 16. It was 2 a.m. Monday. Settlers slept. Suddenly the earth shook. Cabins shuddered. Logs creaked. Cradles rocked. Chimneys cracked. Bells rang. Clocks stopped. Dishes crashed. Cattle bawled. Dogs howled. Horses panicked. People fled their cabins; huddled in the cold. Parents prayed. Children cried. The ground rolled up in waves. Trees blew up, cracked, split, fell by the thousands. When earth waves hit the tall timber, forest giants weaved their tops together, interlocked their branches, sprang back and cracked like whip lashes. The earth rumbled, roared, split open, raised in some places, sank in others. On the prairie, snow white sand shot up like geysers. Along the Wabash and little Wabash Rivers banks caved in. Trees toppled into the water. Mrs. Edward McCallister hurried her children into a dugout canoe, pushed it into the Wabash River. Violent waves forced her to struggle back to the heaving land."
"The earth shook all night and the following day. Tremors continued for three months, with massive shocks January 23 and February 7. The praying pioneers didn't know it, but they had experienced the heaviest earthquake ever to shake the American continent. It shook 1,000,000 square miles."
Mentioned in father James's will dated 14 June 1799 and probated in 1801. Parents: James MCCALLISTER and Mary MCGLOUGHLIN.He was married to Mary DEHART on 10 Aug 1785 in Botetort Co, Va.(6944) Children were: James MCCALLISTER, Simeon (Simon) MCCALLISTER, Thomas MCCALLISTER , Richard MCCALLISTER, John MCCALLISTER, Mary Polly MCCALLISTER, Elizabeth MCCALLISTER, Sarah "Sally" MCCALLISTER, William MCCALLISTER, Edward MCCALLISTER Jr..I got this information from this website:http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~leebrick/d172.htm#P3719
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Edward MCCALLISTER, b. 4 Mar 1758 in Augusta Co, Va.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor
Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"
The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"
The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.
Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.
Modern-day Republicans have become, quite simply, the Party of the One Percent – the Party of the Rich.
"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as budget director under Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax jihad – one that benefits the prosperous classes."
The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent. Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less than a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the growth of the preceding dozen years," says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the gains went to the top percentage points."
The GOP campaign to aid the wealthy has left America unable to raise the money needed to pay its bills. "The Republican Party went on a tax-cutting rampage and a spending spree," says Rhode Island governor and former GOP senator Lincoln Chafee, pointing to two deficit-financed wars and an unpaid-for prescription-drug entitlement. "It tanked the economy." Tax receipts as a percent of the total economy have fallen to levels not seen since before the Korean War – nearly 20 percent below the historical average. "Taxes are ridiculously low!" says Bruce Bartlett, an architect of Reagan's 1981 tax cut. "And yet the mantra of the Republican Party is 'Tax cuts raise growth.' So – where's the fucking growth?"
Republicans talk about job creation, about preserving family farms and defending small businesses, and reforming Medicare and Social Security. But almost without exception, every proposal put forth by GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates is intended to preserve or expand tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans. And most of their plans, which are presented as common-sense measures that will aid all Americans, would actually result in higher taxes for middle-class taxpayers and the poor. With 14 million Americans out of work, and with one in seven families turning to food stamps simply to feed their children, Republicans have responded to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by slashing inheritance taxes, extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and endorsing a tax amnesty for big corporations that have hidden billions in profits in offshore tax havens. They also wrecked the nation's credit rating by rejecting a debt-ceiling deal that would have slashed future deficits by $4 trillion – simply because one-quarter of the money would have come from closing tax loopholes on the rich.
The intransigence over the debt ceiling enraged Republican stalwarts. George Voinovich, the former GOP senator from Ohio, likens his party's new guard to arsonists whose attitude is: "We're going to get what we want or the country can go to hell." Even an architect of the Bush tax cuts, economist Glenn Hubbard, tells Rolling Stone that there should have been a "revenue contribution" to the debt-ceiling deal, "structured to fall mainly on the well-to-do." Instead, the GOP strong-armed America into sacrificing $1 trillion in vital government services – including education, health care and defense – all to safeguard tax breaks for oil companies, yacht owners and hedge-fund managers. The party's leaders were triumphant: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even bragged that America's creditworthiness had been a "hostage that's worth ransoming."
It's the kind of thinking that only money can buy. "It's a vicious circle," says Stiglitz. "The rich are using their money to secure tax provisions to let them get richer still. Rather than investing in new technology or R&D, the rich get a better return by investing in Washington."
It's difficult to imagine today, but taxing the rich wasn't always a major flash point of American political life. From the end of World War II to the eve of the Reagan administration, the parties fought over social spending – Democrats pushing for more, Republicans demanding less. But once the budget was fixed, both parties saw taxes as an otherwise uninteresting mechanism to raise the money required to pay the bills. Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford each fought for higher taxes, while the biggest tax cut was secured by John F. Kennedy, whose across-the-board tax reductions were actually opposed by the majority of Republicans in the House. The distribution of the tax burden wasn't really up for debate: Even after the Kennedy cuts, the top tax rate stood at 70 percent – double its current level. Steeply progressive taxation paid for the postwar investments in infrastructure, science and education that enabled the average American family to get ahead.
That only changed in the late 1970s, when high inflation drove up wages and pushed the middle class into higher tax brackets. Harnessing the widespread anger, Reagan put it to work on behalf of the rich. In a move that GOP Majority Leader Howard Baker called a "riverboat gamble," Reagan sold the country on an "across-the-board" tax cut that brought the top rate down to 50 percent. According to supply-side economists, the wealthy would use their tax break to spur investment, and the economy would boom. And if it didn't – well, to Reagan's cadre of small-government conservatives, the resulting red ink could be a win-win. "We started talking about just cutting taxes and saying, 'Screw the deficit,'" Bartlett recalls. "We had this idea that if you lowered revenues, the concern about the deficit would be channeled into spending cuts."
It was the birth of what is now known as "Starve the Beast" – a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by bankrupting the country. As conceived by the right-wing intellectual Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan called for Republicans to create a "fiscal problem" by slashing taxes – and then foist the pain of reimposing fiscal discipline onto future Democratic administrations who, in Kristol's words, would be forced to "tidy up afterward."
There was only one problem: The Reagan tax cuts spiked the federal deficit to a dangerous level, even as the country remained mired in a deep recession. Republican leaders in Congress immediately moved to reverse themselves and feed the beast. "It was not a Democrat who led the effort in 1982 to undo about a third of the Reagan tax cuts," recalls Robert Greenstein, president of the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "It was Bob Dole." Even Reagan embraced the tax hike, Stockman says, "because he believed that, at some point, you have to pay the bills."
For the remainder of his time in office, Reagan repeatedly raised taxes to bring down unwieldy deficits. In 1983, he hiked gas and payroll taxes. In 1984, he raised revenue by closing tax loopholes for businesses. The tax reform of 1986 lowered the top rate for the wealthy to just 28 percent – but that cut for high earners was paid for by closing tax loopholes that resulted in the largest corporate tax hike in history. Reagan also raised revenues by abolishing special favors for the investor class: He boosted taxes on capital gains by 40 percent to align them with the taxes paid on wages. Today, Reagan may be lionized as a tax abolitionist, says Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and friend of the president, but that's not true to his record. "Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years!"
But Reagan wound up sowing the seed of our current gridlock when he gave his blessing to what Simpson calls a "nefarious organization" – Americans for Tax Reform. Headed by Grover Norquist, a man Stockman blasts as a "fiscal terrorist," the group originally set out to prevent Congress from backsliding on the 1986 tax reforms. But Norquist's instrument for enforcement – an anti-tax pledge signed by GOP lawmakers – quickly evolved into a powerful weapon designed to shift the tax burden away from the rich. George H.W. Bush won the GOP presidential nomination in 1988 in large part because he signed Norquist's "no taxes" pledge. Once in office, however, Bush moved to bring down the soaring federal deficit by hiking the top tax rate to 31 percent and adding surtaxes for yachts, jets and luxury sedans. "He had courage to take action when we needed it," says Paul O'Neill, who served as Treasury secretary under George W. Bush.
The tax hike helped the economy – and many credit it with setting up the great economic expansion of the 1990s. But it cost Bush his job in the 1992 election – a defeat that only served to strengthen Norquist's standing among GOP insurgents. "The story of Bush losing," Norquist says now, "is a reminder to politicians that this is a pledge you don't break." What was once just another campaign promise, rejected by a fiscal conservative like Bob Dole, was transformed into a political blood oath – a litmus test of true Republicanism that few candidates dare refuse.
After taking office, Clinton immediately seized the mantle of fiscal discipline from Republicans. Rather than simply trimming the federal deficit, as his GOP predecessors had done, he set out to balance the budget and begin paying down the national debt. To do so, he hiked the top tax bracket to nearly 40 percent and boosted the corporate tax rate to 35 percent. "It cost him both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections," says Chafee, the former GOP senator. "But taming the deficit led to the best economy America's ever had." Following the tax hikes of 1993, the economy grew at a brisk clip of 3.2 percent, creating more than 11 million jobs. Average wages ticked up, and stocks soared by 78 percent. By the spring of 1997, the federal budget was headed into the black.
But Newt Gingrich and the anti-tax revolutionaries who seized control of Congress in 1994 responded by going for the Full Norquist. In a stunning departure from America's long-standing tax policy, Republicans moved to eliminate taxes on investment income and to abolish the inheritance tax. Under the final plan they enacted, capital gains taxes were sliced to 20 percent. Far from creating an across-the-board benefit, 62 cents of every tax dollar cut went directly to the top one percent of income earners. "The capital gains cut alone gave the top 400 taxpayers a bigger tax cut than all the Bush tax cuts combined," says David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109#ixzz1eyf1Tnvc
New Documentary Tracks Cultural Genocide of American Indians
Thursday 24 November 2011
by: Rose Aguilar, Truthout
Walter Littlemoon speaks to students atColorado State University. (Photo courtesy Mike Kalush, The Rocky Mountain Collegian / The Thick Dark Fog [3])
In 1892, US Army officer Richard Pratt delivered a speech in which he described his philosophy behind US government-run boarding schools for American Indians. "A great general has said that the only goodIndian is a dead one," he said. "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
From 1879 until the 1960s, more than 100,000 American Indian children were forced to attend boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed or kidnapped from their homes and taken to the schools. Families risked imprisonment if they stood in the way or attempted to take their children back.
Many of the country's 100 schools were still active up until the 1970s. Generations of children were subjected to dehumanization, cruelty and beatings, all intended to strip them of their Native identity and culture. The ultimate goal was to "civilize" the children.
A new documentary, "The Thick Dark Fog," [4] shines a light on the traumatic boarding school experience through the telling of personal stories. The film focuses on Walter Littlemoon, a Lakota who was forced to attend a federal government boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the 1950s. Littlemoon says his culture, language and spirituality were brutally suppressed.
"The government school had tried to force me to forget the Lakota language and I wouldn't do it," he says in the film. "We had a deep sense of preservation for our culture, so we would go and hide in order to speak Lakota. If we got caught, they were allowed to beat us with whatever they could, but we took that chance. The Lakota language is something that comes from deep inside of you. It comes from how you look at things and how you see things."
"The Thick Dark Fog" profiles Walter's healing process and attempt to reclaim his heritage. "It wasn't until my sixtieth year that I began to realize that there was more to me. Something was missing. It was like I was a nonbeing," he says. "I didn't know the medical words of multigenerational trauma or the complex post-traumatic stress disorder, so I called the problem what I felt it to be: the thick dark fog."
One of the film's more haunting moments provides a montage of excerpts of interviews with Indians describing their boarding school experiences:
"We had all our clothes taken from us."
"I remember always going to bed hungry."
"We were being punished, but none of us really knew why."
"It wasn't punishment. It was beatings. You'd put your hands down and they'd slam the desk down on your hands. They'd take you downstairs and make you kneel down on either a broom handle or a pencil."
"Soap. That's what she used to wash my mouth. I'll never forget the burning, the choking, the helplessness, the fading out that I went through."
Will the US government ever come to terms with and acknowledge its dark brutal past? In 1999, the state of Maine, in collaboration with the Wabanaki tribes, set up the Maine Tribal-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission[5]. In 2008, the Canadian government set up a truth and reconciliation commission to help indigenous peoples tell their stories and heal. What should the US government do to help indigenous people heal from the abuses they suffered in government-run boarding schools?
Listen to Your Call [6] discuss "The Thick Dark Fog," accountability and the power of healing.
Listen here:
Guests:
Randy Vasquez is the director of "The Thick Dark Fog." It debuted earlier this month at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco.
Marilyn La Plant St. Germaine is a member of the Blackfeet and Cree tribes from Browning, Montana. She spent the eight grade at the Pierre Boarding School in Pierre, South Dakota, in the 1950s. She says her boarding school experience was bittersweet. She's been a social worker in American Indian communities for over 40 years.
Denise Alvater is a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. She is lead organizer of the Maine Tribal-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is recording the testimony of the Wabanaki Peoples about their boarding school experiences. When Alvater was just seven years old, she and her siblings were forcibly removed from her home and put in an abusive foster home. They were tortured for four years.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [7].
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Aunt Donnah's Roast Possum
Aunt Donnah's Roast Possum
This recipe is from Ernest Matthew Mickler's White Trash Cooking cookbook. If you don't own it, it's a great addition to your bookshelf. Not only does it capture the flavor and nuance of the Deep South, Mickler's commentary and photographs captures exactly how "White Trash" live. Many of the recipes are written in the voice of the person who contributed the recipe, and others appear to be from someone's personal recipe file. Even if you aren't interested in most of the recipes, it's a book that you'll find yourself reading over and over again.
1 Possum
1 onion, chopped
1 Tbsp fat
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
1 tsp salt
Water, as needed
Bacon, as needed
Possum should be cleaned as soon as possible after shooting. It should be hung for 48 hours and is then ready to be skinned and cooked. The meat is light-colored and tender. Excess fat may be removed, there is no strong flavor or odor contained in the fat.
Rub possum with salt and pepper. Brown onion in fat. Add possum liver and cook until tender. Add breadcrumbs., Worcestershire Sauce, egg, salt and water. Mix thoroughly and stuff possum. Truss like a fowl. Put in roasting pan with bacon across the back and pour quart of water into pan. Roast uncovered in moderate oven (350F) until tender, about 2 1/2 hours.
Aunt Donnah notes that "There's only one thing to serve possum with - sweet potatoes." , and she also notes that possum should only be eaten in winter.
This recipe is from Ernest Matthew Mickler's White Trash Cooking cookbook. If you don't own it, it's a great addition to your bookshelf. Not only does it capture the flavor and nuance of the Deep South, Mickler's commentary and photographs captures exactly how "White Trash" live. Many of the recipes are written in the voice of the person who contributed the recipe, and others appear to be from someone's personal recipe file. Even if you aren't interested in most of the recipes, it's a book that you'll find yourself reading over and over again.
1 Possum
1 onion, chopped
1 Tbsp fat
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
1 tsp salt
Water, as needed
Bacon, as needed
Possum should be cleaned as soon as possible after shooting. It should be hung for 48 hours and is then ready to be skinned and cooked. The meat is light-colored and tender. Excess fat may be removed, there is no strong flavor or odor contained in the fat.
Rub possum with salt and pepper. Brown onion in fat. Add possum liver and cook until tender. Add breadcrumbs., Worcestershire Sauce, egg, salt and water. Mix thoroughly and stuff possum. Truss like a fowl. Put in roasting pan with bacon across the back and pour quart of water into pan. Roast uncovered in moderate oven (350F) until tender, about 2 1/2 hours.
Aunt Donnah notes that "There's only one thing to serve possum with - sweet potatoes." , and she also notes that possum should only be eaten in winter.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
JFK: What We Know Now that We didn’t Know Then
by Jim Fetzer
With the advent of the 48th observance of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it may be appropriate to share important findings regarding what we know now about his death that we have not known in the past. Most Americans are not in the position to take on the task that serious research requires.
As a former Marine Corps officer and professor of philosophy who taught logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning for 35 years, it was my privilege to organize a research group consisting of the best qualified individuals to ever study the case in 1992.
Since then, we have published three books reporting what we have discovered – Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003) — I have chaired or co-chaired four national meetings on this subject and produced a documentary on it.
From these books and other sources I will cite, many available on the net, you can verify what I am saying about our findings.
This research group–whose efforts continue to this day–has included three M.D.s, one of whom attended the mortally wounded president and then, two days later, his alleged assassin, and a world authority on the human brain who was also an expert on wound ballistics.
Another is an expert on radiation oncology who has studied the autopsy X-rays in the National Archives and is the leading expert on the medical evidence; and three Ph.D.s, including one with a specialization in the physics of light, who is the foremost authority on the Zapruder film today.
Others include an expert on the JFK photos and films, who testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations when it reinvestigated the case in 1977-78, another an expert on the production/post-production of films and the technology available to alter them in November 1963, where the third Ph.D. is a philosopher of science who has published 29 books.
Among the enduring controversies of JFK research has been the identity of the man in the doorway, whom many believe to be Lee Oswald. Oliver Stone studied this question in preparing his film, “JFK”, and concluded that it was Billy Lovelady instead, a co-worker at the depository.
Documents newly released by the ARRB, the interview notes taken by Will Fritz, the homicide detective who interrogated Oswald, however, show that Lee told him he had been “out with Bill Shelly [another of Oswald's co-workers] in front” during the assassination.
And, indeed, if you look more closely, you can see that the face of a man who is to the left/front of Lovelady (to the right/front facing him) has been damaged in order to conceal the presence of the alleged “lone assassin”.
While the Altgens has widely been supposed to be untouched, this discovery demonstrates that that is not the case. Indeed, another figure two persons to Lovelady’s right (or to his left facing him) has also been obscured, whom I would surmise was probably Jack Ruby.
This discovery demonstrates that proof that Oswald was framed, which includes the faking of the backyard photographs, is simply overwhelming and far beyond any reasonable doubt.
If we use the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt” to characterize arguments based upon logic and evidence for which there is no reasonable alternative explanation, then what we have published in these books and recent articles demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt:
* that JFK was hit at least four times (once in the back from behind; once in the throat from in front; and twice in the head, once from behind and once from in front);
* that the wound to his throat was caused by a shot that penetrated the limousine windshield, which was subsequently destroyed and replaced by a substitute windshield;
* that the shot to the back was well below the collar, entered only about as far as the second knuckle on your little finger, and evinced no point of exit from the body;
* that no bullet transited the President’s neck without hitting any bony structures and exited at the level of his tie, a trajectory that in fact turns out to be anatomically impossible;
* that, as a consequence, no bullet passed through the President and hit the Governor, who was hit by at least one and perhaps as many as two or even three separate shots;
* that, including the shot that missed and injured James Tague, an absolute minimum of six shots had to have been fired during the assassination, where the total was more likely eight, nine, or even ten;
* that at least 59 witnesses reported that the limousine slowed dramatically or came to a complete halt after bullets began to be fired, which supports the conclusion that it slowed dramatically as it came to a complete halt;
* that the first shot to the head was fired from behind and entered in the vicinity of the external occipital protuberance at the back of the head;
* that the second shot to the head was fired from in front and entered in the vicinity of the right temple;
* that this second shot was fired with a frangible or “exploding” bullet that transmitted shockwaves through the brain;
* that the impact of this bullet combined with the weakening of the skull by the first shot to the head caused 1/3 to 1/2 of his brains to be blown out in Dealey Plaza at the time;
* that the massive blow-out to the back of the head was concealed by imposing a “patch” to the right lateral cranial X-ray (of the skull taken from the right side);
* that the brain had to be reconstituted since, once the defect to the skull had been “patched”, there was no place for that brain matter to have gone;
* that the brain shown in diagrams and photographs in the National Archives cannot be the brain of John Fitzgerald Kennedy;
* that two brain examinations were conducted, the first of which was with the President’s brain, the second with a substitute;
* that the autopsy report was prepared without the benefit of the autopsy photographs, which were removed by the Secret Service;
* that the photographs were subsequently altered and altered in various ways to conceal evidence of the cause of death;
* that the Zapruder film of the assassination was in the hands of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) run by the CIA already the weekend of the assassination;
* that the extant “Zapruder film” has been massively edited to remove evidence of the actual cause of death, including the limousine having been brought to a halt in order to insure that the target would be killed.
A very accessible overview of these findings was presented at a national conference held at the University of North Dakota and published as Chapter 30, “Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?” The studies by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., on the autopsy X-rays have been supplemented by his presentation, “The JFK Skull X-rays: Evidence for Forgery” at a national conference in Dallas in 2009.
A visual tutorial introduction to the evidence that the Zapruder film has been recreated by John P. Costella, Ph.D., “The JFK Assassination Film Hoax” , explains how we know that the film is a fabrication.
That finding that has been reinforced by the publication by Douglas Horne, senior analyst for military affairs for the Assassination Records Review Board, of Inside the ARRB (2009), whose key arguments about the film are summarized in an article for those who may not have time for all five volumes!
Many related articles are also archived at http://assassinationscience.com and http://assassinationresearch.com .
Most of these findings were published in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), which benefited from the release of the first of some 60,000 documents and records that were meant to be withheld from the public by the Warren Commission for 75 years.
Those whose work is brought together in this volume include the leading authority on the Secret Service (Vincent Palamara); the most knowledgeable student of the Presidential limousine (Douglas Weldon, J.D.); a leading expert on the medical evidence at Parkland and at Bethesda (Gary Aguilar, M.D.); the single most highly qualified person to ever study this case (David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.); the Senior Analyst for Military Records for the ARRB (Douglas Horne); a legendary photo-analyst who advised the HSCA during its reinvestigation (Jack White); a world-famous philosopher who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 (Bertrand Russell); a prize-winning director and playwright, who has produced a brilliant chronology (Ira David Wood III); and a philosopher of science who had then published more than 20 books and 100 articles (James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.).
Given the extraordinary character of these findings, it would be appropriate to provide reasons beyond the research itself that was published there to reassure the public that it should be taken seriously.
Fortunately, this book was reviewed by George Costello for The Federal Lawyer (May 2001), pp. 52-56. This journal (formerly: The Federal Bar News and Journal) is a publication for attorneys who work for the federal government, who practice before federal agencies, or who appear before federal courts.
The reviewer was honored with an award of recognition for this review of Murder in Dealey Plaza , which suggests his professional colleagues appreciated the contribution he made, which, in part, he summarized as follows:
What does all of this mean? Any one of the findings summarized above would be troubling by itself.
Together, these findings form a critical mass of evidence indicating that President Kennedy’s autopsy was falsified, and help establish a compelling case that people within the federal government covered up evidence of frontal shots – and hence of multiple gunmen and conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Because it pulls this evidence together in one place, Murder in Dealey Plaza is one of the most important books to date on the Kennedy assassination.
The new evidence turns the tables. No longer can defenders of the lone assassin theory hide behind the autopsy evidence and claim that it trumps all the other evidence.
The weight of this other evidence now trumps the autopsy report. Lone assassin theorists must address and explain the new evidence if they wish to regain credibility.
It is time for people of integrity who were involved in the official investigations – especially the professionals – to take a good-faith look at the new evidence and confront the likelihood that their conclusions were based on falsified data .
Murder in Dealey Plaza may not be the last word on the medical evidence, but it should be the starting point for a fresh look – not only at the medical evidence, but also at the assassination and its implications.
Those implications, I might add, are substantial in their impact upon alternative theories of the assassination.
The mafia, for example, would not have been able to extend its reach into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under the control of medical officers of the US Navy, agents of the Secret Service, and the president’s personal physician.
Neither pro nor anti-Castro Cuban could have substituted another brain for that of JFK. Even if the KGB had an ability to alter films comparable to that of the CIA and Hollywood, it could not have obtained the original of the Zapruder.
These findings thus indicate that at least some of those involved had to have been among the nation’s highest officials, a result that receives further support from James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008) and Phillip Nelson, LBJ: Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination (2010).
It is long past time that the American people are entitled to know the truth about the death of our 35th president.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer who earned his Ph.D. in the history and the philosophy of science, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota. He co-edits assassinationresearch.com with John Costella.
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